


less than three (i love you)

by kyvtae



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Video Game World, Angst, M/M, Mild Blood, Nonbinary Lee Donghyuck | Haechan, Square: Limitless, rated M for More swearing than usual, uh hyuck is sexy and shoots stuff occasionally that's it, why isn't that a tag, yangyang is a twitch streamer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:55:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29053971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyvtae/pseuds/kyvtae
Summary: Yangyang wakes up in the first person shooter game Neo City: Visions with only one thing on his mind: cold, hard cash. He leaves with something greater: a teensy bit of a crush on one Seo "FallenSun" Donghyuck.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Liu Yang Yang
Kudos: 17
Collections: THE COLLECTION





	less than three (i love you)

Nine days wasn’t nearly enough time.

Yangyang didn’t usually care about missing practice (he was DreamV’s main damage dealer, after all, and it’s not like he was in any danger of being kicked off the team), but the Neo City: Visions championships were coming up, and he was too scared of his captain Dejun to let his team down. He also wanted to win, but a trophy was second in priority to the dangers that an angry Dejun (and usually, an even angrier Renjun) could bring.

At any other point in time, Yangyang would love to be stuck in a new world… but this week? Whatever mysterious being that lived up there in the clouds sure enjoyed making him suffer.

He awakens in a strange, decrepit old building illuminated with glowing graffiti spelling out the word “Limitless.” Raising his hands, Yangyang found a pair of black fingerless gloves covering them. He took one off experimentally, revealing leathery skin, calloused and worn in all the right places that would suggest frequent gun usage. His nails were chipped, black paint wearing off as though it had been weeks since he’d last touched them up.

Yangyang tries to stand, and notices a broken window in the corner of the room. He looks in the reflection and yep! There it was… his avatar. Lee Yeosang, 23, ex-military recruit turned revolutionary figure after the destruction of Old Busan. Quiet, fierce, and adaptable. The best sharpshooter on the South Side of Neo City. And apparently, the body Yangyang now occupied.

If he was here, in Neo City, then that could only mean that Donghyuck was too. If Yeosang (Yangyang? He _was_ technically inhabiting his body…) was the best shot of the south, then Donghyuck was the closest thing to second place. Their criminal activities were unmatched, but if working with Limitless would get Yangyang the Units he needed to finish the game and make it home, he’d deal with it. It didn’t hurt that Donghyuck was also pretty attractive, as far as in-game graphics went.

\-- ⭑ --

“And who are you again?” Donghyuck gives Yangyang a precursory look, and Yangyang just knows they’re bluffing, because there’s absolutely no way they haven’t heard of his avatar before.

“Call me Yangyang.”

Yangyang immediately regrets it, because he’s supposed to be Yeosang, damn it, and he’s just blown his cover. Of fucking course he has, and only a few seconds in, too. Donghyuck assumes it’s an alias, meant to throw them off, and responds with more of the same.

“Well then, Yangyang. FallenSun here is happy to meet you.”

\-- ⭑ --

The missions fly by with ease. Donghyuck hot-wires a few cars and shoots a couple of corrupt PoliTechs, while Yangyang attempts to hack into Visionary’s database (he fails, but is still paid the three million Units because EXO Industrial just has that floating around, apparently) and just tries not to die. He thinks it might be because he’s completed the game hundreds of times over, but he’s also perfectly content to let his new partner in almost-but-not-quite-crime believe that he’s a complete and utter genius.

Yangyang, unfortunately, is not. But in a world almost exactly identical to that of NC:V, he’s almost their prophet, flying in from above and bringing dubious gifts of knowledge and bloodlust. That’s the one thing he’s had a hard time with, actually. If he hasn’t been just stuck for hours in some strangely realistic dream, Neo City was an actual place somewhere out there. And actual places meant actual people, and actual deaths.

Donghyuck, despite their slightly sexy grin (not that Yangyang would tell them that to their face), is a bit of a mass murderer. Just a bit. Sure, they looked good doing it, especially in real life as opposed to pixels on a screen, but killing (especially on the scale Limitless did) could only land a person in one place: prison. The Visionary prison, most likely, which was not a place Yangyang dared to step into even once during his previous years of playing NC:V.

Visionary’s capabilities were immense, with the mega-corporation pioneering nearly half of their world’s current tech. With great power came great responsibility, however, and Visionary chose human experimentation on their captured political opponents to further their research. Not very poggers, Yangyang thought to himself. Not very poggers, indeed.

All that meant, in Yangyang’s eyes, was that he and Donghyuck needed to amass the ten billion Units needed to buy an energy core from slightly insane underground scientist Dr. Dong Sicheng without getting the attention of any Visionary officers, and slot the core into his passport to hopefully complete the game and get him out. Super simple! And after the few successful jobs the duo had completed, along with the “spare change” Yangyang had “found” around the city (he stole the money from the bank on his way out, he usually did), they were only down a billion from their final total.

\-- ⭑ --

“FallenSun? Oh… I guess you wouldn’t’ve heard the story, bein’ from out of town an’ all.”

Yangyang shook his head, a bit confused. That bit of the lore had never been explained! How did Donghyu- Oh. This wasn’t NC:V, exactly. Not quite. The two were similar, but not the same.

Donghyuck continued their tale, amused by the look on Yangyang’s face. “It’s an ancient nickname at this point, back from way before Visionary. Crazy how we measure time like that, ain’t it? Anyway, my older brother… you know Youngho, right? J2C? Famous hacker?”

Yangyang did know Youngho! Or at least, had tried to play his character once or twice, but always ended up failing. He just wasn’t a tank.

“He was super into anarchist theory an’ that shit… an’ when he created Limitless… y’know, the hacktivist group, he got convinced we all needed code names an’ crap like that. Bit of a weird dude, though I think it might run in the family.” 

Donghyuck laughs, and Yangyang might actually be a little in love, or at least a lot in like. It’s the cutest sound he’s ever heard, and he suppresses his own giggles by trying to clean his rifle as a distraction.

“The most I ever did for Limitless was shoot some guys I think, but apparently that was enough an’ I got nicknamed Haechan. The name didn’t stick, though I did like it, on account of it bein’ ‘too cutesy for combat.’ He tried the English, but FullSun wasn’t the best choice either, an’ eventually FallenSun happened when Taeil…” 

There’s a pause, and Yangyang is once again left confused. There wasn’t a Taeil in NC:V, or at least he didn’t remember one. He seems important, though, whoever he is… or _was_.

“...When Taeil told me I looked like an angel of darkness after a particularly terrible fight, covered in blood, smiling slightly, an’ white hair sticking out in every direction almost like a halo.”

“You can be my fallen angel.”

Donghyuck chuckled slightly, a grin slowly creeping over their face, as they drawled equally slowly. “Are you askin’ me to fall for you?”

“Shut up, Donghyuck.” 

He didn’t want Donghyuck to shut up, actually. But it was easier to let them think that. It wasn’t like Yangyang would be returning anytime soon after they got the units, anyway. Better to cut his losses quickly and stop himself from falling in love or something like that. Those types of romances never worked out, especially not in FPS games.

\-- ⭑ --

It’s Visionary. They’ve found them, and right when they were about to win, too. Yangyang has no idea how, but he can see the soldiers lining up, spies the tell-tale black visors and incredibly too powerful machine guns. They block out the sun, though Neo City never got much sun to begin with. He can see the Visionary leader, Qian Kun, at the head of the pack with his seemingly random assortment of lackeys and assistants surrounding him.

The officers swarm the rooftop, surrounding Yangyang and Donghyuck before either of them can grappling hook their way away or charge up the teleporter Sicheng had given them for fast travel down to his laboratory.

To put it simply, they’re fucked.

\-- ⭑ --

“Outside of Neo City... how is it?”

Yangyang knows the answer to their question, but doesn’t quite want to answer it. There was nothing, as far as he knew. Just a barren wasteland bleeding into the slew of ones and zeroes that made up the code of NC:V. Invisible barriers prevented anyone from leaving the city limits, and he doubts that even in this world anything would change.

“Amazing,” he says, holding back tears. “You would love it. Forests for ages, lush green grass, even glassy blue rivers and lakes. You’ll see it. I know you will.”

“I won’t. You know I won’t.”

Donghyuck tears their eyes away from the ground, forcing themselves to stare into Yangyang’s own eyes.

“Y’know... I’ve only known you for a few days, but it feels like an eternity.” They choke up, partially because of emotions and partially because Donghyuck knows they won’t last much longer.

“I think I love you, Yangyang, Yeosang. I really think I do.”

“I... I love you too, FallenSun. Donghyuck.”

Their eyes lock for the final time before Yangyang feels his grip on Donghyuck finally loosen, before they go tumbling, tumbling down the side of the broken down building and into the rocky ravine.

Yangyang cries out, pained as if he himself had been the one to fall.

He lays there, silently sobbing for what feels like ages, before finally rolling to the center of the rooftop. The Visionary soldiers were gone, presumably leaving both of them for dead. They were wrong, although Yangyang wonders slightly if it would have been better to go out with Donghyuck off that rooftop or in a blaze of glory fighting Visionary. He’s died many times in the game like that, after all, but the possibility of a perma-death made him hesitate. That, and the Units.

The Units.

Yangyang had the Units for the core.

He could complete the game and finally escape once he teleported to the lab.

Taking one last, final glance at his surroundings, one last, final breath of the polluted Neo City air, Yangyang plummets himself into darkness as he transports himself down, down, down into the underskirts of the city.


End file.
